Managing Our Words

Given my 3 minutes of poetic life, I want to inhale inspiration… Digest divine definitions of diction, and let them pass through my system to the point where… this poem stings the intellectually inclined and creates a process of healing for the intellectually deprived. – Chazz Woodson, Prophecy

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen! In poetry slams, performers generally have 3 minutes to present their pieces, and are usually penalized for going over that time limit. The words above are from a poem that I wrote a while back. As this piece ran through my head moments ago, I thought to myself, “If I only was only granted a total of three minutes to speak each day, how would I spend it?”

The average person speaks around 16,000 words a day and less than 200 words a minute. If we were cut off at 3 minutes, we would lose an incredibly significant amount of communication time. We normally speak about 26 times the amount of words that we’d be allowed with that cap, so every word spoken would be crucial. What messages would you speak to the world? How many words would you allow yourself to waste on negativity? On gossip? On doubt? Who would you spend your words on? Who would you spend your 3 minutes speaking to? Who would you spend your 3 minutes speaking about? How much more time would you spend doing rather than talking about doing?

When you’re sitting in bumper to bumper traffic, three minutes may seem like forever. When you’re favorite TV drama has you on the edge of your seat and breaks for commercial, 3 minutes may seem lengthy as well. But if you’ve got only 3 minutes to earn a job… Or to make an impact on somebody’s life, well then that 3 minutes seems a lot shorter, and the weight of every second and every word spoken is magnified.

Managing our words in terms of both quality and quantity, is probably one of the best things that we can do for ourselves on a daily basis.

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do. – Thomas Jefferson

About the author

Chazz Woodson

Recognized as one of the most electrifying players in the game, Chazz Woodson is also a high school basketball and lacrosse coach in Miami, Florida. He's a driven, goal-oriented man with a passion for spiritual and intellectual growth, writing, education, and serving others. Follow Chazz on Twitter